Maintaining your dirt bike properly on a regular basis will not only elongate the lifespan of the bike, but you will also be provided with a better riding experience. The air filter is a crucial factor when it comes to your dirt bike’s performance, if it isn’t kept clean how it should be, it can cause some serious damage to the piston and barrel, while also blocking up the carby.

To clarify this, the air filter plays an important role since it prevents sand, dirt, and other materials from building up. It does a great job at this, unless you haven’t done any cleaning for quite some time, then it enters the engine which later causes internal damage and lowering your dirt bike’s performance drastically. The message here is that the air filter can perform its task only if its kept clean, otherwise the dirt will still enter where it’s not supposed to.

Other than that, what’s also going to affect your dirt bike’s performance is the lack of airflow, because if the air filter is caked with dirt, its performance it’s not the same. Cleaning the air filter is not as complicated as it seems, it will probably take you 20 minutes or less to do it. Make sure you set up a routine to do this on a regular basis because it’s very important to maintain the air filter properly.

Cleaning The Air Filter

To clean the air filter, you will have to go thoroughly through 7 simple steps:

• Take the air filter our carefully and don’t let muck fall into the air intake. The airbox should be clean, once you’ve taken it out, place an old cloth or something similar in the intake while it’s exposed.
• Take a bucket, pour hot water with washing powder and rinse it as much as you can, until you feel confident that it’s clean. Sidenote, depending on the type of oil that you’ve used, it can take more than just washing powder some times, so you can also use something stronger that’s not petrol.
• Once you’ve done that, squeeze it as hard as you can to dry out the water properly, and leave it somewhere safe.
• During that time, what you can do is clean the airbox because I’m sure it will have dirt stuck inside. So, it’s important that the airbox is also kept as clean as it gets.
• Assuming that your filter is dry now, what you can do to apply oil is to put the oil in a plastic bag. I have seen many riders do it, it’s the most efficient way for me so if you want, you can do it like this. Put the oil in a plastic bag, chuck the filter in and starts squeezing it until you feel like its soaked. Twist the excess and allow it to dry for approximately 25 minutes.
• To seal it properly, make sure you apply grease around the rim of the filter.
• Once you’ve done all of the above-mentioned steps, it’s time to screw the filter back where it once was. Even though the placement of the air filter can be different in different dirt bike models, the process of cleaning it’s the same. All you need to do know is to put it to where it was completely sealed around the airbox flange.

What Air Filter Cleaner To Use

This is a step-by-step guide on how to clean foam air filters, and in order to do it properly, I recommend you use the right chemicals for it. Corrosive chemicals can do internal damage and break the glue that holds the filter together, so don’t do that. Low-quality soaps that leave behind residue are also not the right thing to use, so what I personally use is the PJ1 15-202 Foam Filter Care Kit.

In my blog, I only try to recommend gear, accessories, and other important items that I’d feel comfortable using, and this product is one of those. The PJ1 shares a combination of air filter cleaner with the super tacky spray foam filter oil treatment for a quick and easy filter maintenance combo. It easily dissolves dirt, grease, and grime with a simple spray on, wash off process. Other than that, it also eliminates soaking and rinsing dirty filters in gasoline and other solvents.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much everything, just make sure you follow all the steps and you’ll be good to go in no time. I tried to keep everything as simple as possible which is also why I divided the process in 7 easy to follow steps. Therefore, I hope this article was helpful to you, and if by any chance I left any question about this process unanswered, make sure you contact me and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.